Monday, August 16, 2010

164. Using social networking to help rescue cats

Today, I met a National Library Board officer at the Toa Payoh Public Library. She does not like cats personally. However she spoke to me about her friend who pays money to caregivers to feed the stray cats and had adopted 4 strays. "She is a stray cat militant!" the single lady in her late 30s who loves to read Newsweek and Times magazine told me. "Actually, she is a stray cat activist who cares very much about the welfare and treatment of the stray cats in Singapore" I said. I asked whether this friend is using social networking to help find homes for stray cats. She would find out.

How does social networking help rescue cats? According to the writer Janiss Garza, these are the ways:

1. Facebook, Blogs, Twitter and You-tube reach more people than an ordinary website to raise awareness, do fundraising for medical treatment and food etc and find homes for the rescued cats.

2. Must update content and give follow-up of what has happened to the cats.

3. Facebook.com. Use "fan" pages and groups as an additional help to the main website. It has many applications to enhance experience of current andpotential supporters and volunteers. E.g. of a facebook group is http://co.siameserescue.org E.g greatlakesbengalrescue.com received donations and one adoption because one of the volunteers has a blog and twitter account

4. www.blackcatrescue.com marketer, S. McDuffee has the following suggestions:

4.1. Your blog is part of a subdomain of your own website e.g. blog.blackcatrescue.com instead of using blogger.com or wordpress. Search engines love blogs and blogs may drive more traffic to your website

4.2 Connect with blogs for other rescues and interact.

4.3 "Create a page" link in facebook to set up a page on Facebook for your breed rescue that has no website.

4.4 Facebook fan pages are better than groups as they inspire dialogue between the rescue and its fans. The page's status updates will appear on the Facebook newsfeed of any befriender.

4.5 Integrate all together the blog posts, twitter blasts nto your facebook page. For your blog, do a search on facebook for "Blog RSS Feed Reader" to find the application to enable this for your blog and either the "Twitter" application or "selective Twitter" application to add Tweets to your rescue page. Add YouTube account for videos.Photos on Flickr.com.

Use a flip video camera. cheap and easy to use.

5. All these aim to get more cats adopted.

Terms1. facebook.com2. The wall: Known as "newsfeed". Where updates are posted.3. Status update: Known as "What's on your mind".4. Fan page: A regular facebook profile set up by you.5. Twitter: micro-blog6. Tweet: a twitter post7. Application or app.: software to add to your facebook profile or page to make it more interactive.8. RSS feed: automatic syndication posting to you blog or twitter, facebook or facebook fan page. 9. URL shorteners for long URL or link. e.g. it.ly and tinyurl